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(Counting chickens before they are hatched? - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
The New Hampshire primary is Tuesday, but Mitt Romney is leaving for South Carolina. The South Carolina event is eleven days after NH, but Romney is so confident of victory that he is doing only three events here before leaving for the south.
This development is not good for the NH primary. Romney has no qualms about hurting our traditions; as you may recall, his campaign was supportive of Nevada's effort to caucus within the seven day window after NH. Now, he is ignoring traditional NH retail politics to focus on another state just days before our primary. Having a major candidate spend time before our primary hurts us (Perry doesn't count, he is not a major candidate). And, when Romney comes back, he won't be doing much by the way of retail politics, as he will instead be doing debate prep for the Saturday and Sunday debates.
Even the time Romney spent yesterday was not New hampshire-esque. He didn't get here until noon; no early morning hanger rally greeting the candidate in Manchester or Pease or Nashua. Instead, hye was to busy doing the national morning shows - from Iowa.
When he did get here, he only did two events. One was at Manchester Central High School, the same gymnasium venue used by President Obama a few weeks ago, When the President was here, the whole gym was packed. All the racks of bleachers were pulled out, and every spare inch of floor space was taken. Romney's team closed off half the floor with pipe and drape, and closed the bleachers. The Romney camp may say this was to better fit the town meeting format, but I've been to huge presidential campaign town meetings
with several hundred people. Nor was the crowd particularly enthused. You would have thought the campaign could have rocked the house with excited supporters. From all the clips I've seen and news accounts I've read, it was a blah event.
I don't know how Republicans and undeclared voters will react to Romney's failure to campaign here all week, his failure to campaign hard when he is here, and his failure to give as many voters as possible an opportunity to see him up close. Again, the campaign will say he has been here many times over the past year, but NH voters make their minds up late, and they do like to see the candidates. They also like to think that the candidates are working hard. Romney bascially is ignoring the way successful candidates have campaigned in NH for decades. Maybe he is so far ahead it doesn't matter. Maybe NH Republicans are more or less resigned to the inevitability of a candidate they really can't warm up to. Maybe they will take their marching orders from the establishment insiders who have lined up behind Romeny. If they do, I am afraid that we will have turned an unfortunate corner in the NH primary, one that turns away from our retail tradition.